Cindy Sheehan, the California mother of a young man killed in Iraq, has now been camped out for ten days in a ditch down the road from George Bush's ranch in Crawford, TX, demanding the president meet with her to explain why her son Casey had to die. She pledges she will not leave until she gets a face-to-face meeting, and will follow him back to Washington when his vacation ends if need be. Her encampment has swelled into a tent city as supporters from around the nation have converged on Crawford. On Friday Aug. 12, Bush passed right by in his motorcade on the way to a GOP fundraiser. The NY Daily News reported that Sheehan's sign read: "Why do you make time for donors and not for me?" Bush's black Chevrolet SUV has tinted windows, so it was not clear if he looked at her, or the growing ranks of demonstrators, or the hundreds of plain white crosses, painted with the names of the dead, they have planted.

As the paramilitaries in Mexico's southern state of Chiapas are re-asserting their reign of terror, their Zapatista enemies, in contrast, are disavowing a return to arms and trying to draw support for their national political mobilization, announced last month. At an Aug. 6 meeting with Mexican left organizations at the jungle settlement of San Rafael, Subcommander Marcos announced what he called the "Other Campaign," implying an end to armed struggle and a call for dialogue on a national program.

A new wave of paramilitary violence is reported from Mexico's conflicted southern state of Chiapas. Within the last eight weeks, more than 20 Chol Maya families have been displaced from the community of Andres Quintana Roo, in Sabanilla municipality, by threats and attacks from the notorious paramilitary group Paz y Justicia, according to the Chiapas-based Fray Bartolome de Las Casas Human Rights Center (Frayba).

The US company Epi Security & Investigation says it has hired some 1,000 Colombian military and police veterans to work as mercenaries for the US occupation in Iraq. Epi is operating from a house near a US air base in the Ecuadoran city of Manta. The Bogota daily El Tiempo reported on Aug. 12 that the Colombian mercenaries receive salaries of between $2,500 and $5,000 a month—less than half the salary charged by their US counterparts. Most of the mercenaries are retired military officers or police agents who were trained by the US military and are accustomed to working with US troops.

At least 18 opponents of the Cuban government were detained in connection with four small protests on or near Havana's waterfront on July 13. Several hundred government supporters, including construction workers on a job at the nearby Hermanos Ameijeiras hospital, attacked the protesters, who numbered a few dozen at most; several protesters were reportedly injured. Dissident sources say the government organized the counter-demonstrators and transported them in official vehicles. The protests commemorated an incident on July 13, 1994, in which 41 people died as they tried to flee Cuba in a stolen tugboat; dissidents say three pursuing government boats purposely rammed and sank the tugboat, while the government says the boats collided accidentally. (La Jornada, Mexico, July 14, 15; AFP, July 13, 14)

The interim Haitian government released right-wing paramilitary leader Louis Jodel Chamblain from jail on Aug. 11. Chamblain, a leader in an armed rebellion that ended when President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted in February 2004, had been imprisoned since April 2004 because of his conviction of several crimes committed under military rule in the early 1990s. An Aug. 17, 2004 retrial cleared Chamblain of charges in the 1993 murder of business leader Antoine Izmery, and on May 6, 2005 the Supreme Court overturned his conviction in the 1994 massacre in the Raboteau neighborhood of Gonaives. He remains convicted of the 1994 murder of a priest, Jean-Marie Vincent.

Early on Aug. 2, unidentified individuals broke into and used homemade explosives to set fire to the Quebracho Poty community radio station at the San Ramon Nonato parish in Puerto Casado, Paraguay. No one was hurt, but the attack left virtually the entire station destroyed. Some people believe the attack may have been carried out by employees of the Victoria company, owned by the World Unification Church of Korean businessperson Sun Myung Moon.

The Indonesian government and the rebel Free Aceh Movement (GAM) signed a peace deal in Finland Aug. 15 aimed at ending the local war which has claimed 15,000 lives in over 29 years. "This is the beginning of a new era for Aceh," said former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, who mediated the talks. "Much hard work lies ahead." Efforts to end the conflict quickened after the tsunami in December, which devastated much of Aceh. In the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, big screens were set up in the main mosque so that people could witness the signing in Helsinki.